Your Character's Name: Kate Johnson I stretch my stiff muscles as best as I can. Concrete doesn’t make the best mattress but I’ll be fine if I can get moving. Sleep isn’t something that I’ve been able to do lately anyway. Mostly laying and hoping for a few moments of unconscious bliss before being jarred awake by some noise or nightmare. It helps to have a cute puppy to look at all night. I must have dozed off while Art snuck out because he left sometime during his watch shift with only a note saying he was going to check on something and he’d catch up. By now the others were fully awake too and we decided to look around the garage a bit more. I was interested in finding the power source of the building. Jane and Dahvin wandered out the garage door leaving me alone.
I found a back office, well I could tell it was an office through the reinforced glass window that had a little slot near the bottom. The thing I was most interested in was the door I could see at the back of the office. I make quick work of the door lock using a screwdriver and some paperclips I had found earlier. I was going to head straight for the next door when I spotted a safe underneath the front desk. I was torn for a moment but found the safe to be a new challenge compared to the simplicity of the door locks and my curiosity got the best of me again. The safe was easier then I thought it would be though the rewards on the inside were a bit disappointing. The bullets and money were quickly scooped into my bag and I moved on.
I was on a roll, no lock can hold me back from whats on the other side of a door. I flashed a cockey grin at the two locks on the storage closet. Tried the knob, locked. I start with the bolt lock on the top. The tumblers were falling to my awesome skill when I fumbled the screwdriver and broke off part of my paperclip in the lock.
“Damnit!” I yelled throwing the rest of the ruined paperclip across the office. The small object didn’t make nearly enough of a satisfying noise when it bounced off of the wall. I huffed and clenched my fists. “Clumsy, stupid, Kate.” I growled at myself. I checked back over my shoulder to see if anybody saw the tantrum but luckily I was still alone. I hope they’re alright, they don’t need me though. I went back to the lock fishing out the broken piece, that tiny symbol of failure. Finally clearing the mechanism I tried again making quick work of it this time and then unlocked the knob. Finally I get to find out what’s on the other side. I twist the knob but the damn thing still won’t open. I kick the door. The deadbolt must have been unlocked and here I am making things more difficult for myself. Frustration rises in my chest and burns like acid. Life was so much easier when I wasn’t a homeless vagrant. Finally getting the door open I mutter something about my incompetence under my breath but the sound hits me first.
The roar of a machine that was surprisingly inaudible with the door closed. The smell of grease and gasoline oiled my sinuses. As I swung the door fully open my breath caught in my throat. It was hard to see in the dim light of the storage closet and hard to think over the roar of the generator but there was something along the back wall that caught my attention more then the shelves of cleaning agents, can of gasoline or generator ever could. The body was hunched over and almost skeletal. It’s sunken eyes glared at me, through me, past me. My life was inconsequential to it. In one hand it gripped a bottle and the other a book. Even in death, even after the body had stopped sustaining itself the intent to hold stayed behind. Who was this person now eternally guarding the generator? Is it a man or woman? Did they have goals, hurts, desires, or dreams? Was there a family still searching for them? How long had this person been forgotten here? I reached down slowly towards the book. The pounding of the generator made my ears hurt and I tried to focus on it but the panic started welling up in my chest and the sound of the generator was distant. One, two, three, four, it’s not going to hurt me, it’s dead, nothing is there anymore, five, six... I slowly wrapped my fingers around the book and tried to gently pull it away feeling the grit of the dust on the cover and moving so deliberately that my appendages felt foreign and distant. The hand crumbled and the book came free with no physical effort on my part. His hand was now a pile of rubble upon the ground, the transformation was so quick from hand to rubble it’s almost as if it had been rubble all along. His hand... gone forever, never to be reassembled just like his life. Is this how I will end? Is this how I will be found and remembered or never found and forgotten? Am I a pile of rubble waiting to be transformed to my final state? two, three, fo-- A hand rests on my shoulder and I spin around screaming with arms flailing. He’s coming to take me with him!! It’s just Jane and she tries to calm me and keep me from hurting myself. Like usual. The dead man, I’ll assume, kept staring at me watching me, making my skin crawl. I now had something of his that death couldn’t make him let go of. I started backing out of the room while Jane surveyed the room. Panic kept filling my chest and I had to get out of there before it exploded.
Five, six, seven... I lean against the wall catching my breath. My ears ring in the relative silence of the office as I tap out the numbers on the back of my hand. The panic in my chest starts fading. There’s no more danger of my insides exploding out through my chest. Deep breath Kate. I compose myself before Jane can see me freaked out. I look at the book in my hand, leaf through it quick. A journal, a written memory of a person. Now it’s my responsibility to carry his memories.
I stretch my stiff muscles as best as I can. Concrete doesn’t make the best mattress but I’ll be fine if I can get moving. Sleep isn’t something that I’ve been able to do lately anyway. Mostly laying and hoping for a few moments of unconscious bliss before being jarred awake by some noise or nightmare. It helps to have a cute puppy to look at all night. I must have dozed off while Art snuck out because he left sometime during his watch shift with only a note saying he was going to check on something and he’d catch up. By now the others were fully awake too and we decided to look around the garage a bit more. I was interested in finding the power source of the building. Jane and Dahvin wandered out the garage door leaving me alone.
I found a back office, well I could tell it was an office through the reinforced glass window that had a little slot near the bottom. The thing I was most interested in was the door I could see at the back of the office. I make quick work of the door lock using a screwdriver and some paperclips I had found earlier. I was going to head straight for the next door when I spotted a safe underneath the front desk. I was torn for a moment but found the safe to be a new challenge compared to the simplicity of the door locks and my curiosity got the best of me again. The safe was easier then I thought it would be though the rewards on the inside were a bit disappointing. The bullets and money were quickly scooped into my bag and I moved on.
I was on a roll, no lock can hold me back from whats on the other side of a door. I flashed a cockey grin at the two locks on the storage closet. Tried the knob, locked. I start with the bolt lock on the top. The tumblers were falling to my awesome skill when I fumbled the screwdriver and broke off part of my paperclip in the lock.
“Damnit!” I yelled throwing the rest of the ruined paperclip across the office. The small object didn’t make nearly enough of a satisfying noise when it bounced off of the wall. I huffed and clenched my fists. “Clumsy, stupid, Kate.” I growled at myself. I checked back over my shoulder to see if anybody saw the tantrum but luckily I was still alone. I hope they’re alright, they don’t need me though. I went back to the lock fishing out the broken piece, that tiny symbol of failure. Finally clearing the mechanism I tried again making quick work of it this time and then unlocked the knob. Finally I get to find out what’s on the other side. I twist the knob but the damn thing still won’t open. I kick the door. The deadbolt must have been unlocked and here I am making things more difficult for myself. Frustration rises in my chest and burns like acid. Life was so much easier when I wasn’t a homeless vagrant. Finally getting the door open I mutter something about my incompetence under my breath but the sound hits me first.
The roar of a machine that was surprisingly inaudible with the door closed. The smell of grease and gasoline oiled my sinuses. As I swung the door fully open my breath caught in my throat. It was hard to see in the dim light of the storage closet and hard to think over the roar of the generator but there was something along the back wall that caught my attention more then the shelves of cleaning agents, can of gasoline or generator ever could. The body was hunched over and almost skeletal. It’s sunken eyes glared at me, through me, past me. My life was inconsequential to it. In one hand it gripped a bottle and the other a book. Even in death, even after the body had stopped sustaining itself the intent to hold stayed behind. Who was this person now eternally guarding the generator? Is it a man or woman? Did they have goals, hurts, desires, or dreams? Was there a family still searching for them? How long had this person been forgotten here? I reached down slowly towards the book. The pounding of the generator made my ears hurt and I tried to focus on it but the panic started welling up in my chest and the sound of the generator was distant. One, two, three, four, it’s not going to hurt me, it’s dead, nothing is there anymore, five, six... I slowly wrapped my fingers around the book and tried to gently pull it away feeling the grit of the dust on the cover and moving so deliberately that my appendages felt foreign and distant. The hand crumbled and the book came free with no physical effort on my part. His hand was now a pile of rubble upon the ground, the transformation was so quick from hand to rubble it’s almost as if it had been rubble all along. His hand... gone forever, never to be reassembled just like his life. Is this how I will end? Is this how I will be found and remembered or never found and forgotten? Am I a pile of rubble waiting to be transformed to my final state? two, three, fo-- A hand rests on my shoulder and I spin around screaming with arms flailing. He’s coming to take me with him!! It’s just Jane and she tries to calm me and keep me from hurting myself. Like usual. The dead man, I’ll assume, kept staring at me watching me, making my skin crawl. I now had something of his that death couldn’t make him let go of. I started backing out of the room while Jane surveyed the room. Panic kept filling my chest and I had to get out of there before it exploded.
Five, six, seven... I lean against the wall catching my breath. My ears ring in the relative silence of the office as I tap out the numbers on the back of my hand. The panic in my chest starts fading. There’s no more danger of my insides exploding out through my chest. Deep breath Kate. I compose myself before Jane can see me freaked out. I look at the book in my hand, leaf through it quick. A journal, a written memory of a person. Now it’s my responsibility to carry his memories.